The American Girl (4 page)

JULY 13, 2015

Blog Entry

Back home in Boston, this blog is all about coming up with creative ways to make my boring life seem interesting. I:

     
•
     
tell weird stories that are semibased on my antics

     
•
     
post bloodthirsty stories about zombies and hell beasts

     
•
     
quote lines from classic horror movies of the '80s

     
•
     
write trashy tabloid headlines to caption my most awkward moments

I guess it's how I met you all, horror fan friends, who always write bloodthirsty comments on my Monsters of New England posts:
My Rockport Devil Sighting
,
What Mothman?
and my most popular post ever,
Lizzie Borden and the Fall River Witches!
Earlier in the year, I had so many great chats with talented writer
friends like
PoeBoy13
and
dreamswithghosts
that I got up the nerve to send some of my horror stories out to zines and even got “Lila on the Ceiling” published in
Splatterpunk
! (It's that one you all said reminded you of early Stephen King—oh, how I would
love
to be Stephen King one day!) I thought my travels in France would give me the perfect chance to develop my skills with some travel writing, and find some new spooky places to do a little urban exploring, dig into the local legends.

Turns out I didn't need to leave this house to find the darkness. It found me. It's weird to think that this blog used to be all about a wannabe writer with no life experience to write about. Now that life in France has taken a dark turn and real stuff has happened, I should be unblocked, but I'm not. Now for once I find myself wishing my life was more ordinary.

It's almost dawn and I've given up on trying to sleep. I've taken my meds early—clonazepam, Wellbutrin, Depakote, lorazepam—hoping to calm down, but they didn't make me any less anxious or depressed, so now I feel drowsy
and
stressed.

In the cold light of day, it will seem less scary, I guess, but I still have that papery feeling. Like something's about to go wrong. I've turned around and around and around in the starched sheets all night and haven't actually slept. That video thing freaked me out way too much.

Any suggestions, people? Maybe y'all are asleep.

At least Noémie's home now. I heard the noises of her door creaking open, the whisper of her clothes falling to the floor, the rusty metal groan of her climbing into bed. I felt such relief to hear those familiar sounds, so much that I almost went in to
tell her about what happened . . . but I didn't know what to say. The video is gone. I put the text message into Google Translate. It said,
This is real
. That's all. Pretty weird, huh? And I don't know her well enough to guess how she would react.

Though after three months here, I should, right? I came here just after Easter, hoping to complete my very last quarter of high school speaking fluent French. Since then, I've walked with Noémie each day to the shiny new lycée for fast-talking French lessons and head-spinning economics lessons (not sure if the latter is useful preparation for being an English major at Bryn Mawr in a couple of months, but Noé's studying it for her baccalaureate so I'm tagging along). Each weekend—as stipulated by my study abroad program—we've gone on an odyssey of cultural discovery in Charente-Maritime: exploring the Vieux Port, the amphitheater and the big old church in La Rochelle, the museums of commerce and automata and the
son et lumière
at the castle (that place about a hundred times!). The Sacred Heart Travel Scholarship promised a chance to “soak in the French way of life through full cultural immersion, expanding academic horizons as much as comprehension.”

If anything, I have less comprehension. Noé is more of a mystery to me than when I arrived. Back in April she seemed excited to have an American friend, giving me friendship bracelets and mixtapes, throwing me parties. Since the holiday started, she's been quieter, staying in her bedroom a lot . . .
sang-froid
, maybe, or plain old-fashioned dislike. We were hurled together by the freak weather conditions of cultural exchange, matched by an educational eHarmony through a database of hobbies
that couldn't possibly tell if we had much in common. Secretly, though, I think we have too much in common—living in our heads, not being, as the French say,
bien dans sa peau
. It makes for a lot of awkward silences at dinner, that's for sure.

It makes for being lonely. I even tried to phone my dad, but I think he's too busy getting ready for the trip to Tahiti with Meghan. They're superbusy, anyway, preparing for the new baby, the tiny half sister or brother who's arriving just in time to fill in for me when I go off to college. Pity that kid! I mean, Meghan's nice enough. I'm sure she'll make a good mom. She turns twenty-five in a few weeks, so she'll be exactly half Dad's age by the time she goes into labor. He was supervising her PhD when they started sneaking around, and I think she thought he was a catch.

She came to dinner once before they knew I knew and after a bottle of wine she told me “your dad is such a good listener, even when I talk about my feelings.” Then I
really
knew. Though I still didn't know whether to hug her or warn her to get out while she could. So I just topped up her glass and later, in my room, I looked at some old photos Mom took of me and Dad for some photography project or other and tried to see if he listened to me back then, if we were close. But how can you tell? Just because people smile for photos doesn't mean they're happy.

Poor Meghan's learning the hard way now. Postmarriage, prebaby Dad is an absent presence, working late, drinking hard, teaching summer school so he doesn't have to spend time with anyone who's not an adoring student. I remember feeling bitter when they got engaged and thinking,
One day he
'll blame you for
everything like he blames me.
Like he blames me for Mom dying and for losing it after she did. Now that it's come true, though, I just feel sad for her.

Anyhow . . . to make a long story short, I didn't talk about the stalker/message situation with Dad or Meghan or Noé or anybody. In the end, I just spent the whole night feeling totally paranoid, making a bullet-point list of suspects (in other words, a list of all the people I've met here so far):

     
•
     
Noémie Blavette

     
•
     
her mom, Émilie

     
•
     
Marlene who works at the café

     
•
     
Émilie's British friend Stella

     
•
     
the school caretaker, Monsieur Raymond

     
•
     
the local kids who hang around the pool

Seriously, though, I can't think of any reason any of them would send me snuff movie texts. After all, I'm just an ordinary girl who happens to be a long, long way from home.

JULY 30, 2015

H
alfway back to the hotel, a pair of headlights glared in my rearview mirror, burning full blaze. I shielded my eyes. The car came closer, going faster. I craned around, blinded by the lights. Behind me, the car was almost touching. I braced for impact, squeezed my eyes half shut. I heard the engine rev, the rubber squeal of the tires swerving around me. As it flew past, it swiped the side of my rental, jolting the car.

I almost steered into a ditch but I didn't stop. I kept on driving, forcing the little car back on course. I could feel the sweat streaming down my collar. By the time I was straight and steady again, the red taillights of the other car were just visible in the distance like the eyes of a demon dog. Then they left me in darkness.

Everything around—the white moths shivering in the headlights, the treetops soughing in the wind, the bats, the night noises—fucking everything gave me the creeps. I drove
on instinct alone. No higher brain function available. Just getting towards people, lights, civilization as fast as I could, away from the silent house and whoever was in there with me. Twice I drove into one of the loose-dirt ditches that run the length of the narrow roads, once out of sheer nerves, once because a car came straight at me around a bend, headlights blazing, radio blaring. We almost crashed. I swerved. It was only sitting in the ditch, the other car's horn blaring angrily into the distance, that I realized I was on the wrong side of the road. I sat, took a deep breath, took out a cigarette.

I pride myself on my stoic nature. I always have, from my tree-climbing, bottle-rocket-building childhood onward. I talk straight. I swear loud. I honor promises. Like John Wayne, but female and much less right wing. If you asked me to describe myself in a word it would be
tough
. Or
bitch
. Or maybe
tough bitch
, but after the scrabble out of the Blavette house, the headlights on the way home, it took a full ten minutes until my hands stopped shaking enough that I could light that cigarette.

I couldn't help wondering if it was Monsieur Raymond who had opened the door at the house, followed me along the dark road. Take it from your unreliable narrator: there was something creepy about that creepy caretaker. No way of knowing for sure, though.

My phone binged at me from its plastic rest on the dash. A message popped up—Bill asking if I was still alive.

I tapped to call him. He picked up after two rings but didn't say anything. “Hey, Bill. You good?”

“Who wants to know?” He sounded cranky. A couple of days without checking in, and already the sarcasm had begun.

“Me, Molly,” I said with a laugh, taking a drag of my cigarette, my eyes flicking nervously to the rearview to see if anyone was there. “You losing the plot without me there?”

“Flattery will get you everywhere, you know,” he said in the deadpan tone I knew and loved.

“That how I ended up working for you for peanuts?”

“Ha. You got anything on this girl yet?”

“Yeah. But listen, I gotta go,” I said, turning the ignition.

“You okay? You sound . . .”

“Call you later.” I hung up and turned out into the road.

I knew St. Roch was a short drive from the Blavette house, but nonetheless it seemed like a very long while before my poor car juddered to a halt outside the Overlook—the seen-better-days hotel Bill had booked me a room in. Actually, the only hotel in town, a grand old turn-of-the-century building with a comfy three-star hotel inside. Its original name, Le Napoléon, better befit its air of seedy hubris.

But I love a fleapit, and the Orwellian level of journalistic commitment it implies. I love that you meet people from all walks of life, that you can drink out of a paper bag or eat pizza or smoke cigarettes (hell, probably even crack) in your room. Most of all, I love that there are people inside and the lights are always on.

After the trauma at the Blavette house, I felt that life owed me a pack of Gauloises and a whiskey. My room in the Napoléon
can just about sustain a guest edging around the single bed to turn on the TV or open the door, and the pissoir is so closely situated that you can practically use it from the bed if you've got good aim. You can also turn the TV on with one toe as you smoke out the window. So instead of going straight to my room, I walked past the bored desk clerk playing Angry Birds, past the wolf pack of journalists decamped from the hospital to the hotel bar. As soon as I reached that comforting oasis of wood and free peanuts, I ordered a double JD.

I stared into the drink, my pale, freckly face suspended in the dark liquid like a bad moon rising, my hair wild. Not a good look. Turning to my phone, I checked for messages, pretending to myself that I wasn't still shaking. There were two: one from my mom and another from Bill. I texted Mom that I was really fine, and left Bill for later.

Playing silently on the TV over the bar was a news bulletin about the missing Blavettes, showing the faces of the mother, the son, the daughter. Pictures harvested from their Facebook accounts just as Quinn's have been. Photos showing smiling faces, glowing tans, people with places to go and everything to live for.

Back in Paris, when the #AmericanGirl story broke, I did as much Googling around as I could on my phone. News about Quinn was easy to find. Deeper searches led me to a dedicated subreddit as well as a concerned group of Facebook well-wishers, online supporters for this viral heroine having sprung up overnight like chanterelles. The main theory of the subreddit armchair detectives (the very same sweetly fanatical cellar-dwellers who tune in to my show each week) is that the family went to visit
a relative, to get away for a weekend. They've been roundly criticized as irresponsible for leaving a foreign exchange student in their care to wander and wash up broken. Now the police have declared them officially missing, the clock will begin ticking, as it is already ticking for the girl.

After messages, I flipped through the photographs I'd taken with my iPhone, glancing at dark and poorly composed images of the woods, the house, the bedrooms in darkness. The one that made me pause longest was the photo of the photo on Émilie Blavette's nightstand, so different from the fake-smiley Facebook ones issued by the police. In the picture from the nightstand, Émilie looks happy. She hugs her husband close, though he stands more aloof, all French and cool in his sunglasses and crisp shirt. Young Raphael leans his head on her shoulder, a gangly fourteen-year-old momma's boy. Noémie at twelve is a chubby little thing, cute in her pigtails and halter top, hugging Daddy tight.

How does a whole family disappear? Leave the face of the earth without a trace? From reading the news and snooping at the house, I know this: one minute the Blavettes were a normal(ish) happy(ish) family—the son a star athlete, just beginning his university career in film-making, the daughter a shy girl who loved ballet and ponies and boy bands, the mom a former head teacher. One minute they were going to the beach, posing for smiling photos, the next, gone. And what of the American girl, who they'd invited to be part of their family for a summer? How did she fit into this picture?

I took advantage of the better standard of Wi-Fi in the bar to check out Twitter (#AmericanGirl still trending, video still
viral) and Facebook. I'd already had a brief look at Quinn's page, but now I looked again, noting her relationship status: “it's complicated.” Her privacy settings meant you couldn't see much: a profile picture of her with the Blavette boy and girl arm in arm on the beach with the sea behind them, tanned, grinning happily, Quinn in the middle, squeezed between the siblings. They must have been pretty buddy-buddy to get to the profile pic stage. Behind them lies Quinn's cover image of herself standing in the middle distance on a Boston lake in winter, black-clad against the snow and ice, serious-faced, a forlorn contrast to her seeming happiness in France. The only other thing I could find is a little clip of her waving pom-poms at some high-school football game, blond hair bouncing. A different Quinn again. This version seems like the sort of popular airhead whose high-school yearbook reads like the story of her, whose bed would be surrounded by get-well cards. The “Mean Girl” type. I found myself wondering which image is the real her, or if any of them were.

Thinking back, I didn't see one get-well card; and that fact only deepened the mystery surrounding her. The American news had said a lot about her father, Professor Leo Perkins, head of classics at Harvard. It also mentioned that she was an only child whose mother had died years before. A fresh Google search revealed a Spotify with a bunch of playlists and an Instagram with more pictures. I looked at her snaps of a pool, a beach, the woods, a club full of young people partying, trying to make sense of the captions—
Picnic at the beach
,
Noé, Raffi and Freddie
,
Adventure at Les Yeux
and the hashtags #funtimes, #selfie, #thuglife.

By two in the morning, the barman was yawning and giving
me a weary look as he polished beer glasses and swept peanut shells off the bar and into my lap. Finally, even this exquisitely polite individual lost patience and asked me to go. I was about to head upstairs when I remembered that in my fearful rush, I'd forgotten my notes in the car. Good time to nip out for a smoke, anyway.

In the parking lot, I teetered along, suddenly realizing how drunk I was. It had been raining and the streets were gleaming. As I came closer to my car, I saw that the passenger door was ajar. Had I forgotten to close it? Kicking myself, I tottered closer, hoping that wasn't where I'd left my file of clippings on the case.

It was only when I reached the car that my eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw that I hadn't forgotten to close the door at all. Someone had jimmied it open with a piece of metal, or something—you could see it from the tiny scratches in the paint job around the handle. Pulling it open, I saw my file was gone.